Yes, Star Wars only introduced time travel. Don't weird out.

As we saw with a very outspoken minority of Star Wars fans who got dissapoint about The Last Jedi, bringing new facilities of a Force to a shade can be rather controversial.

Now we’re witnessing a new freakout over Force powers. The TV uncover Star Wars Rebels, set between Episode III and Episode IV, usually suggested for a initial time in a saga’s central storyline that a Force can let we transport in time.

But there are good reasons because fans should reason their blaster glow on this one.

In The Last Jedi, Luke Skywalker used a hitherto secret skill, Force projection, to send an picture of himself opposite a star and save a Resistance. “That’s not how a Force works,” cried some fans — until executive Rian Johnson forsaken a mic by showcasing a book from that this energy was drawn.

In Rebels‘ many new episode, “A World Between Worlds,” neophyte Jedi Ezra Bridger discovers a opening to an ancient Jedi church on his home universe of Lothal. He opens a puzzling doorway around a relocating mural, and finds himself in a immeasurable hades of pathways and portals.

“It is a pathway between all space and time,” says a Imperial apportion who has been excavating a temple. And then, some-more ominously: “whoever controls it controls a universe.”

As Ezra walks by a scary space, he hears whispers of people from a past and destiny of a whole Star Wars saga: Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Princess Leia, Yoda, Kylo Ren.

Finally he reaches a portal display a stage from a culmination of a prior Rebels season: former Jedi neophyte and Rebellion personality Ahsoka Tano dueling her former master Anakin Skywalker, aka Darth Vader. He also sees himself as a younger man, confirming that this is indeed a conflict he witnessed in a past.

And afterwards Ezra crosses a threshold, pulling Ahsoka out of a quarrel and into a hades to save her from Vader.

Here’s a impulse itself — though if we have 5 mins it’s value examination a full stage here.

And there we have it. The initial instance of time transport in all of Star Wars filmed party — and a step too far, grumbled some old-school fans on Twitter. Meanwhile, one film website suggested J.J. Abrams competence use time transport in Episode IX to “fix” a “problems” of The Last Jedi — and maybe even move Luke Skywalker behind from a grave.

To contend i’m not all eager by a introduction of Time Travel to @StarWars is a staggering understatement.

To design @disney to use it artfully and responsibly is absurd given new efforts. Perhaps this unequivocally is a genocide spiral.

But is this unequivocally a profanation of a simple thought of Star Wars? Will Force-wielding residents of a star far, distant divided unexpected start zipping around time and space by portals like they’re in some mashup of Stargate and Doctor Who?

The answers are no, and unequivocally expected not. Let’s puncture into a reasons why.

Almost no one can time travel

After impulsively saving Ahsoka, Ezra visits a integrate other portals. In one, he sees his master Kanan nobly sacrificing himself a integrate of episodes into a past; Ahsoka convinces him not to disaster with a timeline by reversing that required sacrifice.

In a other, he sees Emperor Palpatine, uttered by Iain McDiarmid. As even a many simple Star Wars fan knows, a Emperor is a many definitely immorality and one of a many absolute Force users in a galaxy, a Sith Lord who pulled a decades-long criminal on a whole Jedi order.

And notably, even a Emperor can't enter a universe between worlds. He needs Ezra’s assistance to do so (and crucially, he knows Ezra’s name), nonetheless he can send his Force lightning by a portal in an try to tilt Ezra in.

Why was Ezra means to entrance a temple? Why is he famous to a Emperor? That’s a doubt that might good be answered in a array culmination of Rebels entrance adult subsequent week. In a meantime, a time-traveling church mysteriously dead during a finish of “World Between Worlds,” suggesting even Ezra won’t be means to use this ability again.

This is partial of a bigger mystery

According to a splendidly creepy relocating picture on a outside, a church appears to have been built by a mysterious, squabbling family of almighty Force users from a universe Mortis — famous usually as a Father, a Daughter, and a Son.

This contingent was introduced by George Lucas himself during a Clone Wars series, in and with showrunner Dave Filoni (who also runs Rebels). They were there to exam either Anakin Skywalker was a loyal “chosen one,” and gave a immature Jedi a prophesy of his horrific destiny as Vader (which was afterwards wiped from his mind).

We’ve not seen a Mortis contingent since, and their start stays unexplained. But a destiny prophesy clearly indicated they had some kind of energy over time, so a hades is during slightest rather unchanging with prior Star Wars canon.

In short, maybe this isn’t so most about a time travel. We should see it some-more as a Star Wars storytellers’ guarantee that they haven’t lost about these weirdest of a uncanny border of Force-using characters.

This is not unequivocally a initial time

We’ve seen Force users transport in time before, despite not on a screen.

In a pre-2014 array of Star Wars books now famous as Legends, a characters Jacen Solo and Ben Skywalker are means to use a singular energy called “flow walking” to perspective (but not change) a past and a future. In a 2006 novel Bloodlines, Jacen goes behind to see his grandfather Anakin Skywalker being lerned by a Jedi order.

Granted, these books are no longer partial of a central Star Wars tale (as we can tell from a fact that those kids don’t exist in a movies; they’re effectively total into Ben Solo, aka Kylo Ren.) However, Lucasfilm has done it transparent that Star Wars writers are giveaway to collect and select elements from a immeasurable Legends repository to reuse going brazen — so we might see upsurge walking on a shade yet.

What we saw inside a church seems to be some-more active than upsurge walking, deliberation Ezra indeed altered a past by saving Ahsoka. Still, it’s not as if time roving ability is wholly unheard of in Star Wars’ prolonged history. There is precedent, usually as there was with Luke’s Force projection.

Rey’s Force prophesy in The Force Awakens and her outing into a subterraneous cavern in The Last Jedi both have time transport aspects. In a former, she sees brief snatches of long-distance past and future; in a latter, a fibre of versions of herself seconds in a past and future. Luke’s prophesy on Dagobah in Empire Strikes Back — of his friends being tortured in Cloud City — might also have been a glance of a future.

In short, Star Wars likes to get timey-wimey with it — though usually in brief glimpses. As most as it breaks new ground, a time transport of Rebels is also intensely singular and sensibly used. There’s zero here to advise a time-traveling retcon in Episode IX.

The Force as we know it is still with us — though it also has a consistent ability to surprise.